The Fierce Loyalty Blog

I had my inaugural voyage into Blab this morning and I loved it (and you can see the replay above)! I see so many uses for this great video/twitter live stream tool in building Fiercely Loyal Communities. It’s been a long time since a newfangled social media tool caught my attention like this. Here are the things I like about it:

It is a no-brainer for audience members to join a Blab. They don’t have to be in the right place at the right time, or wait to be approved or, good forbid, download and install anything. They just click on the link and BAM, they are there.

It has a great way to make audience members the star. Blab lets you bring people from the audience onto the video screen. This is great for letting them ask a question, share an insight, or talk about what is or isn’t working.

You automatically get a super easy to link to the recording. You don’t have to go find it or create it. It’s just there. Which is great because you can share it with community members who weren’t there and nudge them to be on the next live Blab.

I’m going to experiment with using Blab for Fierce Loyalty chats in the coming weeks. If you want to make sure you are in the loop on that, subscribe to the Field Report in the upper right-hand corner to get on the list.

P.S. Many thanks to Samantha Lake with Epicomm for teaching me how to use Blab!

I had the privilege of hosting and speaking for an event in Amsterdam earlier this month that was completely focused on building loyal brand communities. C-suite executives from across Europe attended Engage, sponsored by m-wise. The crowd was hungry and the content did not disappoint. I learned so much from my colleagues who took to the stage.

Below is the recap movie that m-wise put together. While there is a bit of shameless self-promotion for me in it, it is also a fantastic example of using a recap movie to 1) solidify the stellar experience of the event itself for the people who attended it (and who were, as I told them in my presentation, a pop-up community while they were at the event) and 2) to start building excitement and word-of-mouth marketing for the 2016 event. It’s just over 2 minutes, so take a quick break and watch it now.

P.S. Want to learn what I taught this international audience? I’m hosting a rare public workshop in Washington, DC on November 24. Grab your seat here:

Online abuse has no place in a Fiercely Loyal Community. Period. SXSW is finding that out the hard way and way too late in the game. I won’t go into the story details myself. Instead, you can check out the story at US News and World Report below.

I quickly want to narrow the focus for the post to asking you five simple questions:
1) What is you policy on online abuse?
2) Is it written down?
3) Do your community members know what it is?
4) Do you monitor your community to keep it abuse-free?
5) What is the process for reporting abuse?
6) What do you do when it’s time to enforce it?
7) Are you 100% prepared for when that moment comes?

Believe me when I tell that SXSW wishes it had answered all of these questions a long time ago. If they had, they would not be in the nightmare they find themselves in today. DO NOT WAIT until something goes terribly wrong to formulate your Abuse Policy and Protocol. Do it now. This week.

If you don’t think it’s that important, just skim this article. You don’t want this happening to you.